Photos from the tour

Videos from the tour

What Karl's Reading

I made an all-too-hasty promise at the start of 2010 to list my reading and comment on the books as I made my way through the year. I failed, in large part, because my book tour (110 cities in 90 days) put me behind on my own reading and way behind on writing about it. While I did a little bit better in 2011, this year I’ll attempt to get my notes on books I’ve read done in a more timely fashion.

So here’s what I’ve knocked out so far, starting with the book I finished most recently and working back to 2010.

In a particularly vivid work, Doris Kearns Goodwin tells a rollicking tale about two presidents - their friendship, its destruction, and their subsequent rivalry - in a rapidly changing country with even more rapidly evolving media and politics. Goodwin has a gifted eye for detail and insight.

In his new book, 'Lincoln Unbound: How an Ambitious Young Railsplitter Saved the American Dream -- and How We Can Do It Again,' National Review Editor Rich Lowry provides a masterful account of Abraham Lincoln's climb to the presidency from humble frontier beginnings. It is a fantastic take on the sixteenth president's convictions, discipline, and ambition which allowed him to live the American Dream and be in a position where he was able to make it possible for others to do so as well.

A disappointment. After an odd nine-page preface that opens with a Robert F. Kennedy 1968 speech about the notion of GDP, there are 121 herky-jerky pages on how an Italian monk and Venetian merchants used Arabic numerals and Greek math to construct the rudiments of modern accounting. One hundred and twenty-two pages follow on how accounting has contributed to the decline of the planet and the growth of rapacious capitalism, while hiding the fact that the true cost of a Big Mac is $200. No kidding. I’ll look for a better volume on the same topic and report later.

Purchase Your Copy

Courage and Consequence is a candid and behind-the-scenes view of some of history's turbulent and momentous years. It tells how Bush got to the White House and what happened during his consequential presidency. It's a frank account of what I witnessed and my often-controversial role.

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